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After weeks of controversy, Twitter officially banned conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his InfoWars site from its platform. The social media company tweeted out the decision from its Twitter Safety account Thursday afternoon, stating that it permanently suspended Alex Jones and InfoWars after both accounts posted tweets and videos that violated the company's abusive-behavior policy. Previous violations also contributed to the decision to ban both accounts.

Today, we permanently suspended @realalexjones and @infowars from Twitter and Periscope. We took this action based on new reports of Tweets and videos posted yesterday that violate our abusive behavior policy, in addition to the accounts’ past violations. https://t.co/gckzUAV8GL

Both accounts show "account suspended" messages, so the tweets and videos that violated Twitter's policy are no longer available. However, according to a report by The Daily Beast, Twitter confirmed that one of the videos that violated its policy was an InfoWars video posted to Jones' Twitter account. It showed Jones verbally attacking CNN reporter Oliver Darcy, saying, among other things, "Those are the eyes of a rat."

Last month, Twitter gave Jones a small punishment for his inflammatory behavior on the platform—a one-week suspension that prevented Jones from tweeting or retweeting from his personal account. That came after users flagged a video that Jones posted to Twitter in which he encouraged his supporters to ready their weapons against the media and other groups.

Twitter's first punishment was minor compared to the repercussions that Jones and InfoWars faced from other tech companies just days before. YouTube, Facebook, Apple, Spotify, and others had removed content made by Jones and InfoWars from their respective platforms. Facebook followed up by suspending Jones for 30 days, while YouTube terminated his account after it found Jones violated the company's Community Guidelines.

Twitter faced a lot of pressure from users to take action against Jones before the company issued that one-week suspension. At the time, CEO Jack Dorsey said that Jones hadn't violated Twitter's policies but that the company would continue to monitor him and take action if he did so.

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Twitter now joins YouTube as a social media platform that won't have anything to do with Jones or InfoWars. The permanent suspension blocks Jones and InfoWars from their combined 1.5 million Twitter followers, which adds to the numerous supporters that now can't follow Jones' and InfoWars' content on other platforms thanks to previous bans and punishments.

The ban comes after Dorsey testified before Congress on Wednesday about political biases and alleged election interference. At one of the sessions, Dorsey denied that Twitter had any biases against conservative voices after Republican lawmakers repeatedly brought up the subject.

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Valentina Palladino
Valentina reviews consumer electronics for Ars Technica, testing all kinds of gadgets with a focus on mobile devices and wearables. She has a soft spot for Chromebooks. Twitter@valentinalucia

1406 Reader Comments

You know, I stand corrected. It was Giuliani who said it. I clearly was confused by the sight of Covfefe's hand jammed up Rudy's ass making his mouth move.

I had to search manually through recent news stories about Rudy Giuliani before I found something that could have corresponded to your statement.

Rudy Giuliani stated that Donald Trump was completely innocent of all the accusations against him, as is becoming more obvious every day, and therefore the American people, who voted him in and support him, would rise up in (presumably armed) revolt if he were impeached not for good reason, but simply for partisan political reasons.

I don't see this kind of statement as inciting armed violence. In other contexts and circumstances, saying that something constitutes a hijacking of democracy, and Americans would not stand for it, is legitimate free speech.

I would criticize Rudy Giuliani for making a statement that is utterly divorced from reality, but that's another issue.

When my toddler said "hey, fart and toot mean the same thing," it became an educational opportunity, and I now have a three year old who knows what a synonym is. Them again, I also have a very tolerant wife.

When my toddler said "hey, fart and toot mean the same thing," it became an educational opportunity, and I now have a three year old who knows what a synonym is. Them again, I also have a very tolerant wife.

Now just waiting for them to ban the incorrigible anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan. Should be any second now...

Any second now...

I don't know. Maybe he is very careful about what he posts on Twitter. Certainly, I haven't heard of his posts there.

And it's true that here they will want to tread carefully, so that they're not accused of racism against black people. I don't see that concern as hypocritical. So they will want something clear and unequivocal as a reason for taking action.

But if he has clearly crossed the line, and they've done nothing, yes, that is grounds for criticising them.

EDIT: I see he has incurred a relatively minor sanction from Twitter already; his blue check mark of verification has been taken away. Of course, for tweeting "Thoroughly and completely unmasking the Satanic Jew and the Synagogue of Satan." one might have expected rather more.

But in such a short Tweet, I suppose it was amiguous whether he was talking about a few bad people who were Jews, or all Jews in general - with the latter being grounds for expulsion.

When my toddler said "hey, fart and toot mean the same thing," it became an educational opportunity, and I now have a three year old who knows what a synonym is. Them again, I also have a very tolerant wife.

When my toddler said "hey, fart and toot mean the same thing," it became an educational opportunity, and I now have a three year old who knows what a synonym is. Them again, I also have a very tolerant wife.

When my toddler said "hey, fart and toot mean the same thing," it became an educational opportunity, and I now have a three year old who knows what a synonym is. Them again, I also have a very tolerant wife.

When my toddler said "hey, fart and toot mean the same thing," it became an educational opportunity, and I now have a three year old who knows what a synonym is. Them again, I also have a very tolerant wife.

Don’t disagree with your point but where I am torn on this is how do you address the right of a guy who identifies as female to use their chosen bathroom or showering with the fears/rights of the women who have been abused by men and feel threatened or uncomfortable with them in there? That’s what always causes me consternation when trying to figure out.

I get your consternation. I have a trans-woman family member. Her solution for a long while was to avoid specifically-gendered washrooms. Where we are, there are generally family washrooms (usually single-room and accessible) and family change rooms (have complete stand-alone rooms with showers). Most trans folk are just trying to get by as the out-of-place subset they're stuck being and not trying to be disruptive. The ones that ARE trying to be disruptive, well, we call them assholes. But we also call anyone trying to be disruptive in general that, so...

Sarty, I'm a conservative and you know why I complain about this? Not because I like or read Alex Jones, who is a nutter. It's just the camels nose in the tent. "Ban Alex Jones's Hate speech!" And we all say, "yeah, good idea! Ban him, his ideas are toxic!" Next week, it's Dennis Prager: "Ban Dennis Prager, he's promoting hate speech!" Now what? We've already agreed that banning hate speech is a-ok, right? Now it's just negotiating what's bannable and what's not.

And a whooooole lotta leftists seem to think that unless you agree with Mao, it's hate speech. How many people at Ars smear every person who voted for Trump as a racist hater Nazi? An awful lot. How many people at Ars would say any defense of anything Trump did is racist or hate speech? An awful lot. How many people at Ars say that the Republican party and platform as a whole is nothing but hate speech and bigotry? An awful lot.

Most of those attacking Alex Jones see no difference at all between Alex Jones, Rush Limbaugh, Donald Trump, Paul Ryan, or even Mitt Romney. Once Alex Jones's "Hate speech" is banned, then we all know the next target, less "kooky" and less "extreme" will receive the same treatment, and on and on until there is no place left to have a discussion. I remember all the "Romney is Hitler!!!!" frothing at the mouth back in 2012. It's a dead certainly that there would have been calls to ban any support of RomneyHitler on hate speech grounds.

Heck, Ars routinely bans the speech of anyone who disagrees with them on Climate change. That's roughly half of America who is not welcome to comment here on that topic.

Better to fight now that surrender and decide to fight later. Because once surrendering on the concept of "Ban hate speech!" then it's all over, because I've endorsed the idea of banning hate speech... and letting leftists define what is and what is not hate speech to be banned.

Pretty soon it will be mine and others turn to be banned, if we don't fight it now.

Holy Christ, you sure do whine a lot. I thought you conservatives were supposed to be self-sufficient manly men who believed in private property rights and personal responsibility. Instead, here you are crying that some irresponsible dipshit was removed from private property.

As many, many others have said repeatedly, you conservatives have the ability and the right to setup your own right-wing competitor to Twitter and then post all the hateful, angry shit you want. No one is stopping you. But noooooo, that's not good enough for you, apparently. Instead, you demand to shit all over everyone else's stuff and then get up on some stupid moral high horse when you suffer the consequences. Well, suck it up, cupcake.

I feel like I'm missing out on the important parts of a much longer conversation, but since I don't care about annoying little things like context, I'll interject myself into the middle of everything, and say whatever I damn well feel like saying.

I feel like I'm missing out on the important parts of a much longer conversation, but since I don't care about annoying little things like context, I'll interject myself into the middle of everything, and say whatever I damn well feel like saying.

When my toddler said "hey, fart and toot mean the same thing," it became an educational opportunity, and I now have a three year old who knows what a synonym is. Them again, I also have a very tolerant wife.